Mentorship, Sponsorship and Leadership Pt. 2

Welcome to Leadership Sovereignty, the podcast. I'm your host, Terry Baylor, along with Ralph Owens, and our guest, Akpara Young, discusses the benefits of mentorship in decision making, how to learn from your mistakes, the importance of taking risk, and how the pursuit of perfection hinders progress. Akpar, I really appreciate you sharing what you shared too, because sometimes we don't get it in the formal way, right? Like you said, hey, will you mentor me? But someone says, you know what?

I see something about you. Right? And so Akpar, in your case, it was a reflective moment and you said, you know what, I did get that, right? And I wanna hit on something too, right? Making mistakes is okay, right?

I'm a tell you what the coach tells my son, it's okay to make a mistake, just don't make the same one again, right? Learn something from that, right? Because that means we've learned from it, right? I heard someone say this week, I was following someone, another person who's been in my life and kind of helped guide me and opening doors. And on this particular conversation, basically the person was like, I don't know if I'm failing enough.

Meaning that I don't know if I'm taking enough risk, I don't know if I'm putting myself out there enough to reach beyond my comfort zone. Because, and Ralph, you know this about me, as a perfectionist, you don't wanna make no mistakes. I had to ideology change because the kind of mistakes you wanna make are the ones where you're reaching. Getting outside of that. So anyway.

That's good. Akbar, you mentioned that in your reflective moment, realized that you had mentors there along the way who helped you to avoid maybe a catastrophe or a major incident. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

So I would honestly say what I realized more than anything is not so much that there was an avoidance of a catastrophe, but more an understanding of what I was going through. We battle our own demons and impostor syndrome definitely being one of them. Sometimes you make decisions and you make moves that don't always, well, they're not popular moves and sometimes you find yourself being the sole person kind of pushing these things out. Then you start questioning yourself, am I doing this right? Am I helping you?

And understanding that sometimes these are going to be the tough decisions. These are the ones that sometimes you're going to be by yourself and alone and that's the norm. I think getting into that space and having others kind of confirm for you, at least help you understand that, look, what you're going through is no different than what a majority of people go through. And understanding you are not necessarily not unique, but you are not alone in that experience, in that environment. Having a mentor to kind of help validate some of the decisions that you yourself may not be 100% on board with because you're not certain.

You're in an environment that you're trying to survive, you're trying to do the best you can do. Teri's point, at some point, I also have perfectionist mindset in the sense that until it's 100%, it's not ready. Well, the problem is most things you do, you're never going to be able to get to 100%. And I think for me the biggest challenge is being comfortable with 70%, 80%. But I grew up where 70% was that was a D.

That was this 80%, that's your C. My thing is I don't want to be a C student, I want to be a D student. That's the mindset. But realizing that for the most part, it's okay to kind of make those decisions and not have to go the full route. And sometimes a mentor does help kind of point that out to you.

It helps to kind of shine a light on things that you may be doing that are detrimental to your own career path. And you may not even be aware of it because it's ingrained in you, hey, I have to be perfect. I have to get this right 100% of the time. And so bringing in a mentor for me is kind of also bringing in the human element to my decision making process. Not to say that thinking like a computer, but most things we do are kind of based on averages, risk and whatnot.

And so you're looking at it and realizing, hey, sometimes you make the best decision with the information you have at the time that you have

it. Really good. I've had to go through that same process myself and looking back at some of the decisions that I've made as like, hey, you know what, I'm not gonna beat myself up. I made the best decision I had, I could with the information that I had. You said something that made me think about somebody that Teri and I used to work for

at a previous company. And she used to say, You're striving for perfection, but B plus is okay. I'll take B plus all day long. I'll take B plus all day long. Terry, I

think you're on mute there. There you go.

Yes.

Yes. Yes.

Yes. That's exactly what she said.

B plus is okay. That changed my life.

It really did because it gave me some relief that I don't have to be perfect. As long as

I can get it to where it's valuable, which B plus is valuable, then I won. Right? So that's, you know, and as I think about it, she was a type of mentor, even in just that moment.

Oh, for sure.

In that moment. Mean, what do you think, Teri?

Yeah, no, totally, totally. And I wanna kind of open the can a little bit. So I believe as African American leaders, right? And I was sharing with someone the other day about leadership sovereignty. And so the person had asked, Why leadership sovereignty?

I said, Let me give you a real life example. I went an there were probably 5,000 people at this event. There were probably maybe 100 people that looked like me. It's kind of unicorn, man. It's a unicorn.

We don't necessarily have the ability to have that shoulder to shoulder kind of aspect. That's what makes this really special right here, honestly for me. This is a extremely special moment for me to be here with both you, Akpara and Ralph. Because I can say, I know two guys who are at the top of the game. And not only that, they're willing to share their story with you.

Not only that, they have a story that I'm sure that resonates with you. Not only that, these guys are willing to impart in you if you're willing to take the time to ask and to listen, right? So with that being said, right, that perfection thing comes from a portion, at least for me, okay, I'm gonna get one shot at this. I may not get the, you know what, that was a great effort. We appreciate your diligence.

If it doesn't go right, and that's a real life scenario and or whether it's a self created world, or is it a world that we've seen some of our peers before us? I've seen my peers before me, because they were the kind of pioneers. I had a few guys like back in the '90s and it was unheard There wasn't a whole lot of guys like us in the '90s leading shops. I'm just gonna be transparent about that. And so when I did see that, I saw the careful maneuvering that had to take place and this is, man, look, if I'm going too far, just let me know, I'll back it up.

Some of the level of challenge that they would get, I'm sitting here watching this as a young field tech, right? And I'm thinking, he didn't talk to person B like this, why is he talking to person A like this? And person A is in charge. So I'm seeing this, right? So all these things are occurring, right?

And during this time in my career, I really had no aspiration. I was on a different path. I love technology and I was really using that information in another sphere, a realm of my life, because I didn't expect to still be in technology fifteen, twenty years from then. But God had a different plan for me and understood that what was in me needed to be in the marketplace. And there's no leadership sovereignty if I'm still not in IT, probably.

I would have to say, because Ralph, you and I probably don't meet.

Yeah.

So, but that perfection thing is we see this now, we've evolved to a certain degree, right, because we do have you guys in these seats, and we know of other folks who sit in these seats. But navigating the perception of what's come before you and how are you guys changing that? Right? How are we how do you how do because there's you know what? I got Noah and Terrence coming up behind me.

Noah and I are out looking at the stars last night, right? We got his telescope out. He's telling me now, it's at the point now where I'm like, he's like, Dad, I got it. I got it. I'm like, You guys can't see me, I'm taking my hand and zipping it up.

So I'm listening. I'm thinking, This guy's smart, so it's time for me to listen. And these guys are watching, they listen to the show. Show. So how do you prepare what you're doing now for that next generation?

Because that perfection thing is real.

Yeah, it is. Think, Akbar, you mentioned about the impostor syndrome right? And how we sometimes are challenged with that and how the mentors help to validate your thought process and to even help you understand and know you belong where you are, right? You may be unique, but you're not different, right? Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Because I think that's really important for those who may be going through that right now, How you kind of process that and how the mentors helped you with that?

Yeah, I can probably talk to it to some extent. I'll be honest with you. Part of it is that I'm still trying to determine, is this a me issue or is this just the environment I'm in? That sometimes is always a thing as well. It's like, okay, so I see the challenges and I'm wondering, is it just my personality or is it just that that's what comes with this role?

That's what comes with these decisions, that comes with the seat that we actually are occupying. But at the

end of the

day, it also comes down to determining, are you doing the job that you're there to do? And if you are doing that, then all those other questions really don't matter. And I think that that's for me, I guess, and I'll just say this because that is my personal struggle and that is breaking out of that black hole, that negative feedback cycle. And once you get out of that and start focusing on the task at hand, you realize, Look, I have the skill set for this. I can handle this.

So all those other pieces really aren't important. They're distractions. They're definitely a ton of intrusive thoughts. But you realize, I'm doing what I need to do and I'm doing it the way it needs to be done. So having some faith and belief in yourself and you'll be just fine.

And I think that's really for all of us. Think we're in an environment where we're heavily judged you know, by comparison. We're judged just basically looking at most of the things in the world. It's a very subjective approach to it, but we sometimes can get stuck in that comparison and not realize our own value, own worth, and how we're able to actually bring things to to the table.

That's good. Yeah. That's really good. That's really good.

Thank you for joining Leadership Sovereignty, the podcast. We hope you obtain something of value as you walk out your journey. Connect and grow with the community of LS pioneers on X, Instagram, and LinkedIn under the handle Leadership Sovereignty. Thank you and God bless.